Fair enough, I'll just sit over there in the corner waiting patiently. I know you have lots of things going on right now...

Could someone point out the coffee stand? It seems like I might be here awhile. LOL.

Seriously, I know what it's like to have 5 projects going at once and people wanting to see results on all of them at the same time. Take your time, make it as good as you can, and we'll all appreciate it for what it is: great homegrown footage!

I was helping both on Swee's trike, and on Tom's car, having fun hanging out with Doax too!

I know that Tom got a couple other things done on the Neon, but I was mostly helping running conduit under the car.

Two weeks ago, we drilled a hole into the spare tire wheel well in the car. Now, there is flexible conduit (hot-tub piping!) running from the engine compartment, back directly into the spare tire well. It runs in the channel where the exhaust system (now gone!) originally did.

Tom noticed that the exhaust heat shield was attached pretty simply with some threaded bolt holes that went directly up into the frame of the car.

He located some hanger clamps that were the right size for the hot tub tubing.

Those were simply run up into the frame of the car, the tube goes into them, and then we locked the clamps with 1/4 inch bolts with nylock nuts.

The very front end of the conduit (just past the firewall in the engine compartment) didn't have an existing bolt hole to hang a clamp from.

Good thing we have a small guy we can cram in the engine compartment, even with the motor already in there.

We drilled an extra bolt hole straight through the car, coming out as far as I could reach behind the console/radio/dashboard. Just enough room there to get a nut and fender washer on it.

Once the end clamp was set, it was cake to bolt up the other ones, although the other far end did require a custom hole as well.

In the mean time, Tom was also working on a support for the back. Since the rear tow trays go OVER the spare tire well, he though it a good idea to have a middle support for those trays.

Tom cut two pieces of unistrut and notched out a short section of pipe for them to mount together. There is a side-to-side support under the spare wheel well already, so he had the bottom unistrut transverse, but the top unistrut longitudinal to take advantage of it.

The battery boxes have been a lot of work, but are going to be VERY nice when all done. We are hoping that Tom will get some time to clean them up and paint them in the next two weeks, so we can get them in to their final installation, and continue on to installing the controller....

Ben,
Thanks for keeping us up to date on this build. It is very interesting to me and a lot of other EV enthusiasts. I have been waiting for more information on the components for a long time. And I am getting real itchy.

I am one of the few folks that believe that AC is the way to go with an EV. There are a lot of others who feel the same way. But there are a few things that are stopping most of us. Highest hurtle to get over is the cost.

To get real AC power (like from AC Propulsion) will cost $25,000 for motor, controller. This will get you 200HP.

Seimens no longer makes motors/controllers for EVs.

Azure Dynamics has the AC55 motor along with controller. This motor gives you 105HP (78KW) peak and 46HP (34KW) continuous when using 312 Volts. This combination costs $7000.

The second hurtle is weight. The AC55 is 234 pounds.

I think that given enough horsepower, the weight can be overcome. But still, weight is the EV'ers enemy.

You have hinted that Tom's motor and controller has some neat 'configurable'
capabilities and can be gotten for a lot less that $7000. It would REALLY be great if you can get more information on 'how much' and 'what kind' and 'where can I get one'.

Help me stamp out my itchin' and all those other AC guys out there and post some real information to help solve the dilemma of the scarcity of affordable AC EV propulsion units.

The battery boxes took a LONG time and have been a lot of work on this project. Also, Tom has been real busy with his business, so he hasn't had as much time to work on the car outside of the EV build days.

Last I checked, CONTROLLER installation would come after all the battery box work!